Canadian patent 1,012,305 discloses a several embodiments of toilet that are modified to include in their construction a ventilating apparatus. The ventilating apparatus is intended to draw contaminated air and odours from the toilet bowl. Each embodiment includes a hollow toilet seat which serves as a conduit for drawing contaminated air from the toilet bowl. Two alternative mounting positions are illustrated for a blower which promotes the movement of air. One mounting position discloses a toilet tank which is modified by the addition of a partition to create a watertight compartment in which the blower is positioned. Another mounting position discloses a separate blower compartment positioned beneath the toilet tank. The problem with the ventilating apparatus disclosed in Canadian patent 1,012,305, is that it is not capable of being readily retrofit onto an existing toilet.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,488,741 (Hunnicutt Jr.) discloses a toilet bowl ventilating apparatus that consists of a mounting arm with a housing secured in cantilever fashion to the mounting arm. The Hunnicutt ventilating apparatus is more readily adaptable to an existing toilet by securing the mounting arm to toilet seat mounting bolts of a toilet bowl. When retrofitting existing toilets there are often space constraints encountered that require the housing of Hunnicutt to be positioned to one particular side of the toilet. This requires Hunnicutt to either maintain an inventory of both left-handed and right-handed model, or to restrict his sales to either left-handed or right-handed models.